afterglow

chapter 7:

Throughout the night, Zeniba monitored your sleeping habits and found out that you were sleeping alright, except for the occasional forehead scrunching. The next day, she decided to send you back to the bathhouse since there was nothing wrong with your sleeping position or habits, but she did warn you about the curse.

"It's getting worse (Y/N), you need to be more careful, alright?"

You solemnly agreed and went on your way to the bathhouse. When you arrived back at the bathhouse after your daily route around the boundaries of the mystic world that you lived in, you padded up to your room to freshen up and change into a not-so-sweaty kimono. Once you were done, you immediately ran down the stairs to go find your friends and talk to them after so long. To your disappointment, you found Lin and Haku together at the top of the hill in the woods with Sen and talking animatedly. You didn't want to disturb them, so you quietly walked away, sad that the only day you were free and allowed to roam around was wasted just like that. You didn't realise that a certain spirit had caught sight of your retreating form and was rather saddened about your leave.

Haku could only watch as the silhouette of the spirit he was so familiar with disappear into the distance. He was upset that you weren't talking to him anymore, he missed your soft, silky voice, he missed when his name rolled off your tongue so perfectly he could melt. He missed your presence. He missed you. Excusing himself from the group, he chased after where he last saw you disappear off to. Threading through the trees, his lush green eyes scanned through the spindly fingers of the trees to see if he could find a trace of where you had run to. Not finding you anywhere in the forest, he resorted to another place that popped into his mind. The river that led to a waterfall, a place that you and him had found a long time ago and promised to keep secret from others. Unluckily, someone had not upheld their end of the bargain and told a certain brunette where it was. Retracing his steps and fighting through the thick bushes of the path, he walked into the clearing that was breathtakingly beautiful.

The place that he entered was the place that you had discovered in your first few days at the bathhouse. It contained a waterfall that fell straight into a beautiful, crystal clear pond and there were rocks that surrounded the body of water. The long fingers of the trees loomed over the clearing and provided shade from the sun's rays beating down in summer. You had found this place when you were sad about the spirits not accepting you into their large 'family'. The place was a place that you went to quite frequently, especially after your friends spent more and more time with Sen and leaving you behind. The first time Haku found you there was after a fight with one of the spirits in the house who accused you of being lazy and not doing work. You were so mad then that you nearly unleashed your powers on the bathhouse subconsciously.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

word count: 546

Aight, I'm back! My state went back into lockdown for probably the past 2 weeks (who's counting?) and now I have exams on Thursday next week. If I don't update then, it means that I'm probably dying and studying my butt off. I don't want to be a creep, but I've realized that the parts haven't been read fully most of the time, so I was wondering if I should shorten the chapters?

signing out, mokkechild